My personal favorite of his tacky and extensive oeuvre is Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Carol, a seemingly repressed high society type, begins to have dreams about seducing, then stabbing, her free-spirited hippy neighbor. Dreams that (gasp) come true! Everyone fantasizes about having a sexy neighbor make love to us on a red velvet bed with a wind machine, right? Not only does Lizard sleaze things up with its psychosexual lesbian murder, it takes a pretty cool spin on the often formulaic Italian murder mystery. The film becomes like a warped dream, using works of art and shock imagery to invoke the possible madness within its protagonist... before the last 10 minutes of course, when it ties everything up in a confusing, talky and bland bow.
What's remarkable though, given the questionable and sometimes inept work in Fulci's later films, is his mastery of space and locations and their relevance to the mental state of Carol. The winding staircases, bats in the belfry, and locales both ornate and confining, all seem to hint at this woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In all of its lesbian hysteria, arthouse horror and psychedelic dread, it's one of the seminal gialli of its era.
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